


Pyrrhic (leave a light on for me)

by ConcerningConstellations



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Bad Science, Betrayal, Bitter, Bittersweet, Brainwashing, But also, Character Study, Current Events, Dream Sequences, Experimental Style, Flashbacks, Forgivness, Gabriel/Angela Interaction, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inner Conficts, Kind of dark, Man vs Monster, Memory Loss, Overwatch Mercy, Past Relationship(s), Post-Fall of Overwatch, Prose-Paragraphs Ahead, Reaper Character Study, Regret, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resentment, Symbolism, Symbolism Everwhere, Talon Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Talon Sombra, Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Team Talon (Overwatch), Torture, Victory, but there's light at the end of the tunnel, i should mention i am trying my best but still have little to no idea what im doing, ignorance, indulgence, kind of, platonic, vent-ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-03-28 21:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13912128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConcerningConstellations/pseuds/ConcerningConstellations
Summary: (I’m trying to save you,she had said, maybe sobbed, as her hands dug into him, rewiring.No,he growled, blood and smoke bubbling between his teeth,you’re trying to be a Savior.)-Ziegler is captured, wings clipped, halo stolen.He tells himself it's only fair.





	1. Chapter 1

"O look, look in the mirror,

     O look in your distress;

          life remains a blessing

               although you cannot bless."

\- _As I Walked Out One Evening;_ W.H. Auden

 

* * *

 

At first, it was victory.

 

It was him and her and the one-way glass between them, the sterile air of an interrogation room that he was, for once, on the correct side of. It was her in a metal chair with cuffs across her wrists, pale skin blooming reds and purples, the color of lilacs, of karma, the dull promise of mortality. It was the Talon agent on the other side of the steel table, tallying things on a clipboard, asking her questions they all knew she would not answer; things she thought she could take with her to the grave. It was her hair falling loose from its high ponytail and trailing lifelessly into her face, white wisps of smoke, matted red from where she had been knocked unconscious hours before. 

 

He huffs a little at the sight— sloppy, rushed. Thinks vaguely how he could have done it quieter, if they had asked him. 

 

The papers crinkle in his hands. The tips of his fingers are smoking. He shakes them out, returns to skimming the official report Akande had submitted, does not try to stop the smile from spreading across his lips, the color of stone and storm clouds. 

 

She was taken mid-mission, snuck out of the firefight before any operatives could even figure she was missing. The tracker in her comms and suit had been crushed over the Atlantic, dropped and drowned. Her staff— deactivated, unlit and looking rather dejected— was propped up against the far wall, where Sombra was already running diagnostics, dragging one of her five monitors closer to her face, squinting at the endless lines of coded dialog running up the screen. The Valkyrie itself now sat in a containment unit, waiting for the scientists from Oasis to arrive with their boxes of equipment and their lab coats, white and aseptic, so scared to touch anything without their latex gloves.

 

Reaper exhaled, looked down at the table he was leaning on. There, stark against the dark mahogany, laid a golden half-circle, the band dented in a few places. He traded it for the papers, held the halo up to the light, taking stock its weight, its solidness, the way it seemed to glow under the fluorescents. There was a chip in the paint job. He saw the wiring underneath.

 

So. Here they were. 

 

Here was everything he ever dreamed of for months, for _years_ , lied out before him in pieces: Mercy disassembled in more than one way, lips bruised and bleeding, wings clipped. Here he was, holding onto her by the crux, a thin headpiece painted gold. Here was what he promised her so long ago in Switzerland, where she had found his body teetering on the edge of becoming a corpse. Where he could have died, _should_ have died, where he _begged her to let him…_ oh, but she shook her head, he remembers— remembers her face dark and dipped close to him on the table, silhouetted by the lab lights, too cold to be heavenly— shook her head like it was her duty, her sacred right to fix the failing organs in his system, sputtering on fumes and bad intentions; to the broken, hanging limbs, the heart that did not beat so much as gasp, gurgle.

 

He remembers the sensation as she pulled him back— no, not him, not _him,_ not quite—pulled it all back into his skin, the cage of his crooked ribs— remembers when she had the audacity to think she could play God with him. 

 

( _I’m trying to save you,_ she had said, maybe sobbed, as her hands dug into him, rewiring.

 

_No,_ he growled, blood and smoke bubbling between his teeth, _you’re trying to be a Savior.)_

 

Here was everything.

 

“What are you looking at?” Sombra calls, eyes still glued to the monitor, picking apart the lines of code like lint from her shoulder, flicking it to the side.

 

He considered the halo, ran a finger over the seams, wondered how he never noticed them before. It’s so small in his hands. He could snap it in seconds with little to no effort, just as easily as he snaps bones, necks and kneecaps. He could shatter it; watch the pieces fizzle out on the floorboards.

 

“Nothing,” he calls back to her, still smiling behind his mask, letting the word sink in deep and settle. _“Nothing.”_

 

* * *

 

He watches them dismantle her from his place behind the one-way window; watches as they turn the lights up, make her squirm in her chair. They don’t draw blood— they are not clumsy, not brutish, not yet— rather, they keep her awake, keep her coming back to consciousness with the help of water so cold it smokes. The questions they ask her are clipped and simple and emotionless; coordinates, key-codes, construction and blueprints for the nanites coursing through her bloodstream. She says nothing. Her head stays bent down towards her cuffed ankles—one of them broken, bruised brown and green, a hodgepodge of swelling hues— and she only opens her mouth when the current comes down, drenches her hair, the dark undersuit she wore under the Valkyrie. From where he stands, arms crossed, chin raised, he can see her shiver, fit her teeth together to keep silent.

 

“You knew her.”

 

Amélie— Widowmaker, when it was more than just the two of them—stands by the door, the one that leads to a maze of hallways and conference rooms. She is dressed for training, thin nylon and ballerina shoes with rubber soles. Her eyes glow in the dim light.

 

Gabriel— Reaper, really, except for when he was drunk enough or delusional— grunts. 

 

“You know the story.”

 

She takes a step forward, so quiet he does not hear. She carries the smell and the demeanor of an empty room, concrete walls and cold chairs. He can track her only by the shadow sprawled before her, long and lean and curving, courtesy of the hallway lights spilling through the threshold.

 

“That is not what I meant.”

 

He turns to her then, maskless, expecting. 

 

“What did you mean, then?” he demands, letting his arms drop, the orbs of his eyes molten. They do not faze her— little does.

 

She pauses, careful gaze flickering to the glass, to the woman panting on the other side, the gleams of metal on her shoulder blades. Her words are careful, low and reserved. 

 

“Before Zürich. Before you hated her. Before you were this.” She motions to him, almost impersonally, and a new heat rises inside of him— flames of defense licking at his chest, iron teeth bared and ready to sink into something. “You knew her.”

 

He has half a mind to yell— he almost does. But he catches the impulsiveness on the way up his throat, swallows it back down like bile, sulfur and blood. His fingers curl. When he breathes out, it is as if he had smoked an entire cigar in just one drag.

 

_Of course I knew her,_ he almost roars, loud enough to echo into the air vents, shake the ceiling tiles, alert the guards outside. _Of course I knew her— knew all of them. That’s the issue. That’s the_ point.

 

“Yes,” he says instead, voice like gravel and crumbling cobble. He turns back to watch the woman, tries not to see her in as she was then: nineteen and newly recruited, a lab coat too big draped over her shoulders, stained with coffee and sanitizer. She used to wear glasses with white frames, used to fuss with them when she was nervous. She used to smile more. “What of it?”

 

Amélie does not blink. The words are flat, something someone else might mistake for apathy, indifference, a simple matter-of-fact. 

 

“You know what they will do to her.” 

 

It is not a question.

 

He shakes his head, staring through the window, taking stock of Ziegler’s sharking arms, goosebumps down her legs and half-moons of purple beneath her eyes. When they ask her a new question, she drops her head, breathing hard, and ignores them. The man across the table sighs, raises a single finger. Someone emerges behind her, weaves a large hand into the strands of her hair, forces her chin up with a jerk and ignores her as she struggles to escape, because they all know it’s vanity— wasted air, dying light. A rush of water comes down over her, flecks of ice and frost that tangle into her eyelashes, her clothes, the infinitesimal hairs on her arms. 

 

She tries to stay calm— he can see her fingers curled into her palms, drawing blood, straining to find stillness— but she is not strong, not like he is, or Morrison, or the rest of them. In time, she thrashes, panic entering her lungs with the water. The figure holds her down like she weighed nothing.

 

“She’ll crack by the end of the week,” he says, so sure of himself, hooking his arms together by his chest once more. He watches as the woman is finally released, watches her double over, choking for air, coughing up the intrusion. “They’ll pull out a pocket knife, and she’ll cave.”

 

Amélie says nothing. She knows when it is best to withhold her opinion, when she is bold enough to have one— she is a smart one, a survivor. But there is something defiant in the gold of her eyes; something too calloused to be concern. It twinkles like a streetlight barely on.

 

“And if she does not?”

 

He blinks, feels part of his face give way and billow into smoke, the hollow under his cheekbone reforming. It was not something he considered in any great depth— the idea of Mercy screaming under someone else’s thumb, pushed further and further towards breaking, limbs pulled out of socket and left there. So far, this was the finish line: the capture. The moment he would get to grin inches from her face, prove wrong, prove her _human_ , crush her halo beneath his boot. 

 

He thinks of her cracked open, and tells himself he likes it. Tells himself it was only fair.

 

With a rumble, he pushes past Amélie, no longer interested in being in this room and under her eyes, scrutinized and pulled apart. She lets him, not turning to watch him leave. 

 

“If the doctor does not bend,” he murmured, simply, “Then she breaks.”

 

* * *

 

They let him see her whenever they’re finished working.

 

Security waves him through and he steps over the threshold, footsteps loud against the concrete, smells the blood at her hairline and the dampness of her clothes. Her back is to the door, and she doesn’t move when it opens or slams. She stays slouched over, exhausted, her breath just barely shaking as she drifts through the valleys of consciousness— the rises and falls— her body beginning to shut down after days of being awake under the fluorescents. It makes him grin. Victory; he knows he’ll find it here.

 

He turns the chair opposite to her, straddles it on two stilts. The woman across the table sucks in a quiet breath, eyes fluttering behind their lids. Closer, things are clearer— the delicate looking bruise near her collarbone, the cut that split her lip just beginning to scab. Her skin is off-white and clammy, reminds him of winter mornings, where all that was left outside was slopes of snow and frozen rivers, trees dead and dying. The black material of her undersuit makes her look ethereal under the harsh light.

 

“I told you,” he says, arms crossed over the back of the chair, mask fixed tightly to his face. “I _told you_ , Ziegler, that this is where we’d end up.” 

 

She does not acknowledge him for a long moment. Her hair hides so much of her face, a curtain of drying ivory. It makes Reaper want to reach for her skull and shove it back, force her eyes to his, make her see it all. She needed to _look at him_ — needed to take notice of the vapor trickling out the edges of his sleeves, his hood— needed to look at what was left and what wasn't— what she reduced him to. She needed to _see._

 

She takes the first half of a breath; a slow inhale, a stir into wakefulness. She lifts her head until it presses against the chair’s back, casts those eyes down at him, blinks of blue, pictures of an oversaturated sky so familiar he finds himself withdrawing.

 

Ziegler is not surprised to see him— not even afraid— and it makes him angry; makes him feel cheated of something he had a right to, something he had earned. He waits for her to speak, but she just stares, red lips a hard line, shadows blooming beneath her brows. Suddenly, he’s not sure what he’s here for. 

 

“I told you,” he echos, louder, more urgent. He leans forward, shoulders smoking. “You think you’re something sacred, something holy… you think you’re an _exception,_ you and your wings and your— oh, but I always knew this is where that would end, where it all would be pulled apart, choked out of you.” 

 

Nothing. She blinks, regards him tiredly, eyes trained to his mask. He has the distinct feeling that she is staring right through it.

 

The fire bubbles inside of him, fills his mouth with the taste of metal, burning charcoal and coal. It brims over the well of his resolve, spills over in waves— a riptide that drags him down and under— and he slams one gloved hand over the table, dents it with his fist, bares his teeth and tears into her like he has dreamed of doing for all these years. 

 

He stands, towers over her, letting his shadow swallow her up, and he screams so loud he is certain that the glass to his side will shatter open, that the lights will crack and die. He takes her name into his mouth and he ruins it— ruins all of them— from Mercy to Doctor to Ziegler to _Angela_ — and laughs, a sound like a car engine revving, short and strained and sputtering; laughs because there he stood, a devil out of hell, and there she sat, the angel who created him. He laughs so hard that the blackness creeps between his teeth and around his mask, trails like smoke signals above his head, gathers by the ceiling tiles and hovers over them like a cloud. He laughs until it hurts— Christ, it _hurts_ — laughs until he stops, until he is back to barking insults, seething about her sainthood, her selfishness. He calls her out on everything he has brooded over since Switzerland— since that night she had stolen him from release, respite, his own funeral— and he doesn’t stop for what feels like hours, maybe days. 

 

(He knows he won’t stop, _can’t_ stop, not until he finds the satisfaction he knew was here, hiding somewhere between them like a ghost; the sensation that this was over, ended, done.)

 

Parts of him evaporate, reform. The taste in his mouth turns to something bitter, like he was talking around mouthfuls of copper, firewood and blood.

 

She holds him there delicately in her vision, slowly runs him over, eyes half-lidded and aching. She listens to everything, and she doesn’t say a word— not even when he curses her out, crushes her image, claims the death that grew in his footsteps was her fault. The words hit her and settle, and he wonders what he’s doing wrong, what he could be missing, when she would cry, scream, demand that he was wrong— that this was _wrong—_

 

(When he pauses for air, he trails the contours of her face, finds it somewhere buried in the back his memories— pictures of her and him and Amari drawing cards from a deck, lying down hands of kings and aces, fives, straight flushes. There, she smiles, and it burns like candlelight, somewhere between warm and scalding.)

 

“You took everything from me.” 

 

He bends over the chair, crushes the metal backing in his claws. “You— you took it, and left _this_ , and you dared to call it _mercy.”_

 

And he’s done. And it’s finished. 

 

And he’s still here, nothing left inside his chest, limbs half-solid and smoking. And she’s still there, cuffed to a metal throne, red crusted into her hair like a faded streak of warpaint. And the silence is back, but there is no satisfaction in it— no _victory_ — no conquest or triumph. He stumbles, hastily schools his features into submission, forgetting about the mask that separates them. Turning his back to her, he stares at the glass, wishes he was on the other side of it.

 

“You’re right.”

 

He freezes. Her voice is quiet, a breeze between the walls, broken and barely there. They face one another in the mirror, their reflections opposites— hers luminous and white, his black and uncertain, bleeding into the darkness.

 

“What?” he says, the words coming from the back of his throat. She doesn’t look away, doesn’t falter, and he wonders if she’s rehearsed this, wonders if he was that predictable. 

 

“I’m sorry, Gabriel.”

 

And it’s ice and flames and something rotting— it’s holes in his chest— the sensation of his skin peeling back and something underneath rising to the surface, hungry for a fresh lungful air, an eyeful of light. It’s parts of him coming loose and then weaving back together, stronger than before, heavier, more defined. It’s rage and it’s regret. It’s how she says his name— the name he buried at his gravestone instead of a body.

 

He turns in one slow motion, looks her dead in the face.

 

“That’s it,” he says in a sort of daze, not understanding, not ready to. This is not the ending he prepared for— not the ending he wanted. “That’s _it?”_

 

She dips her head against her chest, and her hair covers her face one more, a white flag.

 

“If you think _I’m sorry_ means shit to me— if you think you can earn any _semblance_ of forgiveness— _”_

 

“I would never ask for your forgiveness, Gabriel.” 

 

He trails the curves of her pale shoulders, bent down and slopping, a flower with too much water and not enough sunlight. Withering. That’s the only word for it.

 

He moves behind her, telling himself he didn’t want to look at her anymore, that he wanted to put distance between them. He sees her hands bound to the back of the chair. The tips of her fingers are the color of glaciers.

 

_I’m sorry._

 

“You’re pathetic.” 

 

He says it without feeling his mouth move. For the first time in a long time, he feels chilled, cold. He swallows without a sound, forces his hand to reach for the door handle. “Anything else for today’s sermon?” he spits.

 

She doesn’t miss a beat.

 

“I forgive you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my aforementioned play was wrecked against my will. they changed the ending behind my back, cut lines, butchered characters. i was in grief over it for awhile. then i started writing this and felt better. god, paragraph prose can be so indulging.
> 
> this might get graphic. i'll post warnings in the tags and notes when the second part comes out. originally, i planned on posting it all at once, but that would really mess with my already precarious schedule for _Gravity:(just keep me where the light is),_ so. 
> 
> feedback is appreciated. i know this is much different than what i usually put on here, but i still hope it was coherent. present-day Reaper fascinates me, and i constantly think of how he would interact with Angela, as well as fellow members of Talon.
> 
> more to come. thanks again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is now a three-shot. i got carried away, for better or worse.  
> prose is a beast, sometimes.

 

She stays on the brink of breaking for the next week.

 

He means to visit again, but he is busy, suddenly— the missions take longer, the debriefs are a bore. The hours on transit are spent disassembling his guns and putting them back together, at home with the smell of oil and acridness, with the order to it all. He likes to get lost in the process. Likes to ignore where he is, where he’s going, what he has to go back to. 

 

Amélie had been reconditioned last night. Her skin is darker around the wrists, where the bands held her to the table as she bit down on the mouthguard and forgot. Despite this, she looks calm, collected, the sniper placed across her knees and cradled into her hands like she wanted to be sure no one would try and take it away. Her back is as straight as a chess piece— just as righteous, just as ridged.

 

(Somedays, he wanted to ask what they kept making her forget— what part of her previous self couldn’t be obliterated all the way. He wanted to know what was stolen from _her_. Wanted to know what it felt like to almost remember.) 

 

Sombra is flying, one hand gliding easily over the joysticks, the other doting over a tablet on her lap, a myriad of multicolored text at her mercy. She always liked to untangle code on her off-hours. 

 

_Like a rubix cube_ , she once told him, her fingers tapping rapidly against the keyboard, a sound like rain on a tin roof. He watched the binary race up the screen in a blur, ones and zeros. He was already getting a headache. 

 

_Is there an end to it?_ he asked.

 

She shrugged, coaxing the numbers apart and then back together. She was buildings worlds, he knew. Skyscrapers made of pixels. Cities and subways and café shops next to gardens, brick buildings and lakesides, oceans terabytes deep.

 

_Maybe_ , she said, pretending it didn’t bother her.

 

* * *

 

When _they_ tear into her, it’s different.

 

It’s syringes and scalpels, metal pokers so hot they glowed. It’s electrocuting her until the nanotechnology in her bloodstream fries and fizzles out— until they can rope her down to earth again— make her human— make her bleed.

 

He watches from his perch behind the glass, transparent before him once more, and runs the halo over in his hands; makes up excuses for why he has yet to obliterated it, grind it to dust. By now he has memorized its weight, its shape, the veins of tech on its underside. Without her— Mercy, Angela, any of them— it seems cold. Hollow. Unlike what he’s seen on battlefields and in the onslaughts of Overwatch’s propaganda, it does not glow like a floodlight, does not paint the walls in shades of orange and yellow, does not carry the promise of salvation. Instead, the shadows that hug the room’s corners turn it more grey than gold, and it sits in his hands as fragile as the bones of a magpie.

 

It distracts him from when they bring down the crowbars, the booted heels, the lashings that leave lines down the pale canvas of her back, her black suit torn open where the whip came and left. His eyes drift up, watch as Ziegler curls and convulses on the concrete. She has yet to scream. It bothers him— deeply, profoundly, a splinter between his eyes— and he doesn’t know why. 

 

“They’d let you, if you asked.”

 

He is not alone today. A man in a uniform stands off to the side, sipping from a glass, face bright and unconcerned despite the meaty, dull sounds of impact from the other room. He talks pleasantly around an accent, lips curled up at the corners. 

 

He turns just barely, angles his dead eyes towards the agent. 

 

“Excuse me?” he says, teeth fitted together. It is not often he has visitors here— he is impatient at best.

 

The young man laughs quietly in a charming, dreamy lull, a sound stark against the darkness of this place. Reaper hates it. Hates him.

 

“They’d let you in,” he elaborates, motioning to the window, as if it were obvious. His fingers are littered with marbled bands, black diamonds, rubies that catch the cold light and throw it up towards the ceiling. “Let you give ‘er hell.” 

 

It offsets him for a good moment. In the room over, he hears Ziegler suck in a breath as a dark face twists her arm back and over, holds it teetering on the edge of spraining. A toneless voice asks her a question. She presses her forehead against the floor, hair dirty and everywhere, tries to hide the tears gleaming like gems on her cheeks.

 

His silence must have been taken for confusion. The recruit floats closer, braces his arms on the metal table and makes a soft expression with his brows, as if they were friends, as if he _had_ friends. 

 

“Everyone ‘round here knows, mate, that she made you… well.” He has the courtesy to gesture to the smoke slithering from his cloak and gathering above them.

 

“ _Sir_ ,” he corrects with steely diligence, no longer looking at him. Ziegler murmurs something german as the officer bends down next to her motionless form, wraps a gloved hand around her jaw. He swears he recognizes the words; swears he heard her whisper them under her breath when the nights got late and the paperwork piled up. 

 

“Sir,” he concedes. “No one would blame you, _sir_ , if you went in there yourself. Might even help ‘em break the stubborn thing.”

 

The officer lifts her head, and now he can see her eyes as they struggle to stay open, swollen and bruised. They have kept her awake for too long— the tiredness clings to her like some sort of sickness, eating away at her reflexes, senses, basic motor functions. When she breathes, her ribs shudder.

 

“I don’t enjoy doing other people’s jobs,” he growls, voice reverberating up into the air vents, defensiveness curling like claws around his chest. The figure looming above Ziegler cracks open her lips, inserts a rough finger into her mouth. She chokes. He feels his shoulders steam.

 

“S’understandable,” the younger man says. “Guess I just figured you’d want some retribution— old fashion justice.”

 

He barely hears the words— Ziegler retches, tries to rear away, a dry, sputtering sound emanating from her airway. She struggles, spasms. Then she bites down on the digit hard enough to break it. 

 

The agent screams, jerks his hand away in a blur of blood and bone, leaves her gasping under the single spotlight, white teeth stained scarlet. The second figure in the room goes quickly to hold her down, as if she were a threat. 

 

He wants to laugh. 

 

“Justice. _Justice_. Christ, what are you, twelve?”  


 

“Twenty-two, sir.”

 

He huffs under his hood, goes to throw something sharp and heated back towards the recruit, the words burning like a furnace in his chest. They die in his throat, though, as the officer rises with a snarl, reaches with his good hand into his pocket and brings out a box of matches. 

 

The questions meant for her are forgotten. Though the man beside him leans forward, interested, Reaper feels some half-dead organ drop inside his ribcage, dangle on a single heartstring. His hands tighten into fists, the hairs on his arms rising. Something metallic floods in his mouth.

 

They dig a knee into her spine and make her back arch, nerves raw from the beatings. When she struggles, a hand tangles into her hair, keeps her still, her pretty face pressed flat against the floor. A single match hovers by her bare neck, and grinning, they strike it against the box. It goes up in a gasp of sulfur and smoke.

 

There is a silence, as deep and empty as the oceans. Then there is a scream.

 

It’s enough to shake him— truly and thoroughly for the first time since he can remember, like a hammer to his bones, the sensation of something solid and mortal breaking inside him. 

 

It’s the sound of wind-chimes shattering. A thing drowned and beaten against the rocks. He stumbles, feels his legs go numb, his lungs aching as she unleashes everything she has held onto for the past ten days in a shrill hurricane of anguish, agony. It digs into him like a set of fangs and forces his teeth to grind behind the thin line of his lips, and it turns his breath into blizzards of black, and it’s not what he hoped for— not what he _wanted—_

 

_(What_ did he want? What did he— _why_ was she— he can’t remember, can’t _remember_ , can’t— _)_

 

“I’ll be damned.” 

 

The recruit runs a hand through his hair, facing the glass with reserved interest, maybe amusement. Reaper forgot he was even here. He looks down upon her jerking body as if she were something behind a screen instead a window, his hands folded neatly as he watches her sob into the concrete, the fire kissing her skin, blooming asters and asphodels. 

 

(He is so young, and he dares to _dissociate_ — dares to think he’s earned that right. He’s younger than McCree was before he lost the arm, Shimada the body, younger than Ana’s goddamn prodigy, younger than _she_ was before she dipped her hands into hell and dragged him out. He’s a boy— he’s a fucking _kid_ — and he thinks he can smile at this, thinks he’s above it.) 

 

“The bird sings.”

 

And Reyes— Reaper— he _hates him._

 

“I— Get out.”

 

The other man blinks, lets his arms hang by his side. “What?” 

 

He is at least half smoke when he steps forward, flesh melting into fog, eyes glowing like stoplights. There is a ringing in his ears, the echo of a shotgun blast. It does not drown out her sobs. 

 

“Get _out_ ,” he seethes, suddenly angry, _good_ and angry, grasping for something to hone in on. The recruit moves back, shoulders hunched and hands raised. The rings on his fingers chatter quietly like coins in a slot machine. He is afraid— the light leaves him colorless and squinting. 

 

He spares Ziegler one last glance, eyes traveling between her and him, confused, searching. “Sure, ma— _sir_ — yessir.” 

 

She screams again, and he _lingers_. For a moment Reaper wants to shove him up against the wall, rip the indifference off his face, because he doesn’t understand that this _means_ something; that this was more than him. 

 

(He doesn’t understand thatfive years ago, Reyes had shared a bottle of Ballantine’s with the woman across the glass and confessed to her like it Sunday morning and he was nine; confessed it was his mother’s birthday, or it would have been if the war didn’t eat up his side of the country— that they had drunk it dry and woke up half a day later with her glasses cracked and his guns forgotten in the other room, a headache the size of the state split between them— that they had agreed, in various degrees of pain and drowsiness, to not talk about it afterwards. That they had been close, once. Meet-in-the-kitchen-at-midnight-to-brew-coffee close, listen-to-her-sob-ugly-mixes-of-English-and-German-when-she-lost-someone-on-the-table close, make-fun-of-Morrison’s-ridiculously-neat-uniform _close—)_

 

He remembers all of it, all at once, so clearly it hurt. He feels the ground below him sway, the lights suddenly too bright to look at, the air he breathed getting lost on its way down to what was left of his lungs. 

 

His eyes don’t move away from the glass, not even as the recruit retreats. He does not care when the boy almost trips over the threshold, mutters some malediction under his breath as he turned out of sight. Alone, he bends his head, tries to make sense of the sudden pulsing in his throat, his hands, the tips of his ears. Everything buzzes. Everything _tingles_ , invisible fingers brushing him as light as a breeze, trailing down his arms, his spine.

 

She screams again, sobs as the second match is lit and brought close, and Reyes— and _he_ — he can’t stand it, can’t find the victory in any of it any longer, can’t bring himself to try.

 

So he turns in a storm, trails smoke down the hall, forgetting the halo still clasped in his hand.

 

* * *

 

“I think you should leave.”

 

Sombra has been staring at him since he entered the training room, watching him wage war on the bots and sandbags with bare, formless fists, only rarely dropping her gaze to muse over the tablet on her lap.

 

He pauses, breathless, knuckles bleeding. Turns to look at her over one shoulder.

 

“I was here first,” he tells her, bending down to grab a new bag by the chain, hanging it on the hook. He drops his eyes, but her gaze never leaves him, stays planted firmly there between his shoulders, the sweat turning him shiny. 

 

“I’m serious, Gabe.”

 

It staggers him, but only barely. He spits something cold and dark, punches against the material, pretends he could care less.

 

“I told you not to call me that.”

 

“Amélie does.”

 

“Widow forgets herself.”

 

She looks like she might argue— she is not one to back down from being right. He knows he has never seen her truly, not without the facades, the acts, the freshly polished and never trembling mask of _Sombra_. It bothers him that she dare to call him by that name when he does not so much as know hers. 

 

He hears her click off the tablet. She takes a measured breath, bows her head and stares at the dark screen, as if making up her mind. It’s a thoughtful motion— she is being careful here. He drops his hands to his side, ignoring the trickling of sand by his feet, and stares at her until she looks up once more, eyes bright and hard, a kaleidoscope of dark neons. 

 

“Walk with me,” she offers.

 

He pauses, balancing between a snarl and a sarcastic quip. But something inside of him is drawn to her— to the idea of not being alone here, left with the broken training targets and peeling punching bags. He finds himself walking towards her almost against his will, as if being pulled into her orbit.

 

They trail down the hallways almost aimlessly, not talking, him taking the time to clean his hands with a towel as she drags a single finger across the walls, sometimes looking up at the cameras that line the ceiling’s corners, gaze quiet and calculating. He knows her well enough to sense the air of unease about her, though she hides it well behind that half-smile and tilted jaw. A few agents file pass them, some saluting. He ignores all of them.

 

“Where are we going?” he asks, voice low and listless. 

 

She shrugs, doesn’t look at him all the way. “Nowhere.”

 

They pass the iron door, the one that hides the mirror— the window— her. He tries not to notice, tries not to wonder what she looks like now, what they have reduced her to. 

 

(Thinking of her has been difficult. She oscillates in his head between bloody and beautiful— appears in the corners of his quarters wearing a lab coat and holding a cup of coffee, musing over a clipboard. He has remembered so much since last week. Remembered the way she would work three midnights in a row before crashing on some desolate couch in the den, the way she dressed up as a witch for Halloween, gotten a little too tipsy and ended up stretched across all three of his back seats, talking nonsense in her sleep. He remembered the look he shared with Morrison in the passenger-side that night, the way the man had smiled at him, effortless and easy. Without the scars they gave each other, they seemed so much younger.)

 

He exhales, rolls his shoulders. It was not good to dwell.

 

They exited through one of the back doors, emerged there on a metal balcony that overlooked the great nothingness of sand and sun and distant mirages, the sky more white than blue. The desert sat as desolate as ever. He sighed as the wind reached him, blew back the hood of his jacket, moved his hair and carried away the smoke. 

 

Sombra bent over the railing, as if checking to see if there were people lingering in the courtyard below. She didn’t face him for a moment. Hesitant, he stepped forward, gripped the bars and felt the heat burn his palms. Her head barely came past his shoulder.

 

“Are you wearing comms?” she asks.

 

He raises a brow. “No.”

 

She nods, eyes set towards the horizon. “Amélie and I talked— we decided,” she says, and he freezes, feels cold water soak him from the shoulders down. His eyes burn into her cheek. She doesn’t look at him.

 

“We’re leaving, Gabe.”

 

He closes his mouth, grips the railing harder, hears it creak. The words line up like bullets in a chamber, and when he says them, they are straight and flat and perfect, automated and precise.

 

“They’ll kill you.”

 

Sombra shrugs, a motion that nearly sends him over the edge. “Maybe.”

 

They have talked about this before— amused the idea after one or two of their more delicate assignments, when the three of them were battered and aching and too tired for their own good— but never, he thought, with any conviction. They simply acknowledged the rabbit hole, never once dreaming of letting themselves fall down it.

 

But she is serious, now. Dead serious. Amélie and her must have been mulling over this for months without him, he thinks, and it makes him fume all over again— makes him feel betrayed, belittled, broken up. The heat of this place is too much. He bites down hard, holds the breath in his lungs. 

 

“You— Talon has been good to you. To us.”

 

And then she turns, looks him so sternly in the face he almost believes she will lunge straight at him, grab him by the neck and squeeze. “Don’t _bullshit_ me, Gabe,” she sneers, all notions of indifference lost to the wind. “Don’t you dare… Don’t try to rationalize what these people do.”

 

Her anger is contagious. He indulges in it, tries to drown out everything else, tries to make this easier. “When did you up and grow a moral compass?” he sneers, advancing on her.

 

She takes her own step forward, casts a shadow across his chest. “When did they break you bad enough to forget you used to have one?”

 

Limbo. He feels his cheek evaporate, crawl back together in strings of muscle and sinew. It hurts— hurts like bruises, blunt-force damage. He doesn’t show it.

 

“… I thought you were in it for the money,” he says carefully, forcing the heels of his boots to touch the ground once more, ignoring the way his skull throbbed.

 

She hesitates, holds her chin up, struggling, obviously, to maintain her temper. “I was. I am. I…”

 

Something shifts in the way that she stands. The flush drains from her, leaves her wrung-out, wrong. She turns back to the railing, runs her hands over it and stares out towards the nothingness, watches as a single blackbird glides somewhere far above them, trails his shadow across the sand. Unlike Amélie, silence never suited her. It gnaws at the both of them like something hungry and alive.

 

“They’re asking me to compromise passenger jets. Schools.” Her voice barely reaches him over the wind, the roar of trucks leaving from the garage, cargo moving. “Hack into low-profile government accounts reserved for humanitarian relief projects in Indonesia. I could do it, obviously. I _have_ done it. It’s just— I just…“

 

And she goes mute once more, makes some motion with her hand, as if he would understand it— as if he could one could feel something like that— as if he had room for regret. 

 

“I’m not a fan of being on strings.”

 

The words settle and sink into him like something physical. He opens his mouth, wants to call her off, tell her she was wrong, that she was out of line. But there is something about how she leans against that railing, something about the honesty to this conversation— the vulnerability— that not only makes him wary, but also afraid.

 

“They’re blackmailing you.” It is not a question.

 

She smiles, but it’s the kind of smile that could so easily slip into a grimace. “No. Not yet.”

 

It was almost laughable: the idea that someone could win her war on information— data— dirt. That someone could even be on her _playing field_. 

 

For the first time since he has known her— since they have met here at this very base— since they have spent those sore nights tucked away together against the cold metal of a dropship, cleaning blood out from under their nails, keeping score of who could get the most almost-grins out of Amélie before the sun came up— for the first time since everything, Sombra sounds desperate.

 

“Come _with us_ , Gabriel.”

 

Something flutters weakly under his ribs, adamant on breaking through to his chest, ripping a hole in his stomach, making a mess at his feet. He feels it crawl up his spine and the back of his neck; feels it at the tips of his shoulder blades, the balls of his feet. The blood races everywhere, alive and churning. It scares him. It _terrifies_ him. 

 

He ropes his fingers into fists and swallows it down like a hard shot of Hennessy, breathes smoke like a malediction, makes his face into stone.

 

“That’s not my name.”

 

She doesn’t flinch. “Then what is?”

 

Despite himself, he balks back. Something cold and tight takes hold of him, like the hands of a dead man, and he parts his lips to tell her— to scream it in her face like a bad omen— but he can’t. 

 

(He used to know. This used to be simple. This was so fucking _simple_ before— before he—)

 

He looks at her, plays his last card. “What’s yours?”

 

It’s her turn to shrink away, and for a moment, he thinks he’s won. She trails her nails across the bars of the balcony and looks back up to the sky, watches as the blackbird dives, a blink of darkness against the sun. The brightness of this place doesn’t seem right on her; it drives away the lavender in her eyes, brings out the blue. 

 

“They called me Olivia.”

 

She says it like she’s ashamed.

 

He can taste the sand in his mouth. He tries to play it off, but he can feel his jaw come loose and hang, feel the stiffness in his arms, his shoulders. The line between them— precarious, admittedly, at times blurred over— has moved, maybe even disappeared. They stare at each other like strangers.

 

“They?” he asks, hardly hearing himself.

 

She closes her eyes for a moment too long, inhales the desert air, the sunshine, the smell of gasoline. Then she turns to look at him completely, the slopes of amber to her back, framing her in reds and yellows and scorching shades of autumn, a firestorm of stillness that burns her silhouette into his retinas. When she speaks, he knows there’s not much left in her.

 

“Come with us. If not for you, for me. If not for me, for Amélie.” She traps him there, keeps his feet planted to the flooring without so much as raising a finger. Her eyes are like a blacklight, dim and searching. “You know what they do to her. Tell me that’s okay— _carajo_ , tell me you’re okay with that.”

 

He wants to. He _wants_ to. 

 

He wants this to make sense again. He needs the dots to connect like they used to before he remembered the color of Oxton’s lipgloss, the tune Amari hummed when she pretended not to be nervous, the aftertaste of Reinhardt’s cooking, sausage and sourdough. He needed Overwatch to be the pretty lie, just like he always told himself of when the nights got long and he began to spiral, spiral, spiral, like a bird in a cage, fluttering against the bars of his conciseness, wrestling with who he used to be, what they made him.

 

(What _she_ made him. She. _Her_. Right?)

 

“ _Tell_ _me._ ”

 

He stares, quiet and stiff under her gaze. He opens his mouth, and he tries— by God, he _tries_ — but all he comes up with is an echo, flat, mechanic. “They’ll kill us.”

 

She raises up as tall as she can, narrows those eyes, says nothing. Then, almost disgusted, she whispers: 

 

“Well… Who knew a ghost could be so scared of dying.”

 

She pushes past him. Her shoulder would have slammed against his if the nerves had not turned him to clouds of vapor, quivering smoke. Her shadow leads her to the door, and when she reaches for the handle, he can hear her nails scrape at the metal, turn it half way. 

 

But she pauses. Hesitates.

 

“Have you seen her?” she asks, their backs to each other. “The _doctora_?”

 

He stays still, keeps his lips together. They speak in silence for a moment, too shaken to say anything, aching from all of it.

 

She turns a degree, and he feels those eyes all over him. “You should.”

 

It triggers something. An instinct that tastes like soot and old pennies, that makes his head turn to acknowledge her in his peripherals, that makes his vision pulse read. His hackles raise like an animal’s.

 

“You don’t know _shit_.” There is poison in his words, venom, acid. He didn’t put it there.

 

She considers this briefly, looks down at her feet. He has hurt her, he knows— she bared her soul to him here, a woman who prides herself on secrets, security. She had begun to peel back that coat of armor, and he might as well have stabbed her in the soft spot.

  
He tries to take it back— tries to make this better, make this right— but the words don’t bow to him.

 

“Maybe,” she admits quietly, still clutching the handle. The door opens with a creak.

 

Panic makes his hands shake. He needs to say something— he needs to _fix this_. But he is split down the middle, suddenly at war beneath his skin, and the best he can do is a question, too indifferent to mean anything.

 

“Where will you go?”

 

She looks at him over her shoulder, framed by the threshold, the light of this place now only a crooked line down her back. Her eyes are hard, heavy things.

 

“Somewhere,” she shrugs, shaking her head. “Anywhere.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know how i feel about of this chapter. i meant for so many other things to happen that this by itself almost feels incomplete and wordy. i don't think i would have posted it had it not been for HellsungHawk-- who is both my favorite human being and also new to the AO3 community (check him soon out if you're a fan of MHA, manga and show)-- who encouraged me to no end to just put this out here and convert this story to a three-shot instead of two.
> 
> Reyes is so complicated, and i really did try to respect his character. the new event (Retribution) is something i find really compelling. and fun. like, fuck, can we talk about Gabriel Reyes's sexy ass voice for a hot second?? please????
> 
> comments appreciated. this will probably be updated / finished before Gravity, so thank you for being patient with me. cheers, as always.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short chapter for personal reasons.  
> this has been sitting on my laptop for about a month. thank you to Hellsung for encouraging me through it, because dream sequences are my Kryptonite.

When they visit, his dreams are bright, cold things, lit up on all sides by cruel fluorescents, overexposed until the shapes bled into the pale aether, broke into fragments. They move around him like traffic on a timelapse; figures stuck frozen in place before being whisked off by some invisible current, leaving behind ribbons of light, foreign echoes. He sees things wrong, out of frame and without order. Someone’s hands gnarled and trunk-like lacing up a patched pair of boots— the back of a pilot’s helmet, littered with scratches and stickers— the blinking stare of a streetlight, eerie, but familiar.

 

At first, the dreams scared him. There were times he glanced down and saw himself as a dead man— _truly_ dead, all white-fingered and sagging skin, something oozing between his toes. Sometimes he was smoke with no form, something that billowed above a city fire, gasoline and charr. Then, to neither his delight nor distress, there were those nights where he looked and saw nothing. Thin air. Not even a shadow.

 

If it is memories he witnesses here— stained by the sterile, seamless walls of his subconscious— they are lost on him. He is an observer, a host, stuck with the part of himself even she could not purge when she…

 

She is here tonight.

 

It makes no difference, he knows, but the fact that he can recognize her here among the starkness is dissuading him from indifference. The lights settle on her in a sheet of white, and he can only see the shadow of her jaw when she lifts her chin to stare at him, little slivers of gold along her collar and throat that give her some semblance of realism; of depth.

 

It means nothing. 

 

“You should get ready,” she tells him, pulling the thin membrane of her lab coat tighter around the hills of her shoulders, so snug he can see the imprint of those perfect ports dug into the back of the bone, brackets of metal that peek in and out of view. Her voice, high and smooth, echoes from everywhere. “Drop ship’s up in ten.”

 

He doesn’t understand, but here he rarely does. He says nothing and turns away, tries to drown himself in the static and the light; in the lack of her. But she is persistent. 

 

She smells like daytime and disinfectant, all sunshine and wind and syringes straight out of the packet. When she touches his arm, he’s surprised it doesn’t sting. 

 

“Stop.” 

 

It’s meant to scare her, remind her of his strength, his savageness, his ability to crush her without trying. But the words turn over, tremble like stars battling the daylight. _“Stop.”_

 

She stops, the fingers slipping from his sleeve, and he can breathe again. The glow of her shifts, moves to stand before him once more, one pearly hand held between them, curved in the shape of his cheek.

 

“What’s wrong?” she asks brows bent and brooding, the smile once tempting her lips trailing off into a frown. Her eyes size him up and down, and he knows she’s searching for something bruised or bleeding, some ailment, some callous blown open and raw. Somehow, pinned under that scrutiny, he feels smaller. 

 

His mouth opens, jaw stiff and awkward and aching, suddenly. She is shorter here, platinum hair brushing at her neck and hanging in front of her eyes, the uniform blue under her coat. The timeline is fuzzy, but some ancient part of him knows that this— whatever _this_ was— was from before. 

 

“Gabriel,” she tries again, the hand between them wavering. He trails the contours of her fingers, the curve of her wrists, the rises and falls of her arms and shoulders all the way to the the graceful slope of her neck. They fall apart and back together quickly and often, lost to the bright environment, and it’s difficult, sometimes, to acknowledge where she stops and the world begins.

 

Briefly, he sees himself in the pale mirrors of her eyes— a flash of something dark and whole and solid. A painful, thawing sensation creeps up from his feet. He stands still like a toy soldier and looks down. 

 

He doesn’t feel it when she touches him again, right on the chest, her hand cold like porcelain. He is too busy taking in the flesh and blood around his bones, the harsh lines of his own knuckles and veins and the gaps between his fingers, the way his arms hung from his shoulders, the weight of them, the certainty. He lifts a fist up and squeezes, feels as the tendons under his wrist stretch and settle. 

 

She says something else, but it’s just noise, another layer of static. He looks at her, marvels suddenly at the difference between them, at how unlike everything else here, he isn’t fading, isn’t dismembered and smudged over by the light. Here, he is concrete, undeniable, a ghost in reverse.

 

“I…” 

 

He speaks without meaning to, neck deep in a sort of daze, not looking up from where she and him made contact. Her skin glowed against his. There is a thudding in his ears, a sudden inability to swallow. “This isn’t right.”

 

Angela angles her head down, follows his gaze. Something cold comes over her, turns her stiff and unreachable, her shoulders coming in and together like he had wounded her in some way. Her hand drops to her side and shrivels.

 

“I’m… I only meant to help, Captain.” Her voice is painfully professional, eying the empty space between his boots and her sandals. His shadow doesn’t quite reach her. 

 

He blinks hard, sobering up somewhat, realizing how he must have sounded. Stepping towards her, he spreads his arms and sprawling his fingers, fire pulsing from his chest to his limbs, hungry for her understanding. “It’s not that. It’s not you. It’s— I’m— _look.”_

 

She cringes, and it kills him all over again— kills him like glass between his ribs, debris down his throat, the smell of post-explosions and kerosene. Her eyes grace him gently, traveling his wingspan, the broadness of his shoulders. He almost reaches for her. He almost— Christ, he _almost—_

 

But he catches himself. Crams it all back into its place down deep in his chest, he settles back into his shoes, feels himself recalibrate.

 

“This isn’t me,” he clarifies, quieter than before.

 

She stares him down. The lights threaten to drag her away if he didn’t hang onto those parts of her that served as anchors, the shadows under her brows, the blue of her eyes. When she blinks, he almost loses her. 

 

“… They’re waiting for you,” she says with that half-smile, weary and wrung dry of any conviction. She holds her hands by her stomach and sutures her fingers together until they makes knots, tight and trembling. “You should go.”

 

He’s angry. 

 

(He’s _terrified)._

 

“I don’t owe them a thing,” he explains, too loud, too adamant, because he needs her to _understand;_ needs her to see him now for what he is, what he was. “I never owed them a goddamn _thing_ , Ange. You didn’t get it. None of you ever get it, and I can’t—”

 

(It’s wrong).

 

“— I couldn’t ever get it though any of your heads; any of those thick skulls he pumped with heroics and medals and fucking _statues_. He left me with everything else— with the _broken_ parts of it— with the all the gore and none of the glory, and I _hated_ it, Angela. I hated it. I hated him. I hated you.”

 

(He’s wrong).

 

She doesn’t withdraw again, standing still and center as he tries to convince her, tries to break that soft shell of sympathy she had drawn on her face, her eyes angled up at him like he was some wild, wounded thing; an animal she feared would hurt itself further if she wasn’t there to facilitate. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t need it. It’s just— he’s just—

 

“They’re waiting for you,” she says again, voice quiet but not ashamed. She looks him in the eye and untangles her hands, although she doesn’t try to touch him again, and it makes the space between them seem like some sinister, cavernous thing. 

 

He inhales, tries to fill his lungs all the way, ignores the way it makes him shake. “I don’t care. I’m not _him.”_

 

_(I’m not holy, not brave, not like that. Not like Jack. Not like I used to be.)_

 

She says nothing, looks delicately over his shoulder, where he hears the dropship engines revving. Under his jaw, he can feel his pulse run and dive and crash, listen as his heart hammers in his ears, alive and defiant, because he knows that she doesn’t understand.

 

“I’m not him, Angela,” he echoes, his adrenaline dying, the light of this place beginning to make his eyes ache.

 

Her white lashes flutter as she hones back in on him. It burns, that look— all righteousness and rectitude held back and reserved, like she could harness heaven against him if she had to, cast away all her softness and smite him back to smoke. He believes it. He _knows_. 

 

Without a word she brings an arm up and closer, covers that infinity between them like it was nothing, until he can see the spirals of her fingerprints, the divots between her knuckles. It hovers just above his cheek, the scent of something sterile and breezy, and he goes sill, stays quiet.

 

When she speaks, he can’t see her lips move. Her voice stems from everywhere, plays in perfect unity:

 

“You don’t have to be him to be good, Gabriel.”

 

Her hand is weightless and empty again his bare skin, just an echo, an apparition. Still, he feels it. Feels her. He chokes on something hard and trembling but still stares her straight in the face, like he wanted to convince her it meant nothing, wanted to convince the reflection in her eyes that none of this was real. 

 

“Maybe I don’t want to be good,” he says, a final stand, a desperate grab for friction.

 

She smiles, and he simmers beneath his skin, grimaces against her hand as the lights turn all the way up, starts to drag her away. He reaches for her before he could stop himself, alarmed, but his arm goes straight through her. Elbow deep in something cold and formless, he looks up, catches one last look before the world stole her away. 

 

“Wouldn’t that be easier,” she muses, and then evaporates before his eyes. 

 

* * *

 

He exists as whole and human for a long time, a statue among the tide, letting the traffic of his uncertainty pass through him and not feeling a thing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay. not nearly as sorry as i am to those waiting on Gravity, granted, but still.
> 
> i went through finals recently, went backpacking for a week in the Rockys, wrote upwards of 12.7k words during the hours of transit, and made 2 AMVs. so, i've been productive as all hell, just not here.
> 
> anyways. in all honesty i probably should have waited to post this along with the next chapter. but i didn't, most likely due to the fact that what happens next is very new territory for me writing-wise, and it's taking its sweet time coming along. plus, i wanted to let you all know i'm still alive, just busy and tired and over-caffeinated.
> 
> if it wasn't apparent, this is no longer a three-shot.
> 
> to everyone who reviewed, my undying thanks. to everyone still tapping their food impatiently as they wait for Gravity... it's coming, but not before the end of this.
> 
> and there is an end to this. promise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for some mildly graphic images. keep an eye on the tags in the coming chapter(s).  
> more to come-- thanks for the comments, i need them.

She is alone.

 

He does not remember waking and rising from his bunk, cannot recall his journey through the hallways, the sensation of lights set above him passing in intervals. He is only aware of his arrival, those last silent footfalls that came before the approach, staring past his reflection into the half-dark room to see her pressed against concrete in a heap, tangled and motionless. Her back was to him, arched painfully and marked in crimson lines where the suit was torn open. Black scabs dotted her neck like constellations, cigaret burns carelessly arranged. The light catches the metal in her shoulders, and he realizes now that they had changed— the ports were dented, ugly and asymmetrical, one rising above the other as if someone had tried and failed to pry it from her skin. 

 

In an attempt to escape the single spotlight, she had dragged herself to a corner of the room and curled in on herself before falling into unconsciousness, leaving a smudged arc of something dark and drying behind her. Her ribs fell and rose in a jagged rhythm, harsh against her skin, and he wonders, not for the first time, how much they are feeding her.

 

He enters the room almost in a trance, leaving the door opened behind him and knowing that no one would follow. It was hours past midnight— the base was hollow and sleepy. She doesn’t stir, too exhausted to care, and he draws closer, accounts for the blood matted into her hair, the red streak it left down her face. Her wrists— too thin, wiry and without color— were marked from were the zipties dug in, her veins a violent shade of blue beneath the skin.

 

The smell of blood and bleach grow stronger; saliva, burnt flesh, fluid. He tries to not breathe, fails and gags. 

 

(There is something else, too; something that he can’t identify over the scent of singed hair and vomit. It floats somewhere low to the ground like an omen, so heavy he can taste it, sour and sickening.)

 

A blinking light catches his attention, alludes to something suspended in the back of the room. He turns his head a degree, finds a domed-shaped camera staring back at him. For a moment, he is worried, plagued by guilt, as if simply being here was enough to convict him.

 

By his feet, the woman cringes, her breathing suddenly restricted to sharp inhales. He looks down, watches her eyes roll behind their lids, frantic, desperate. After a reassuring glance back towards the open door, he lowers himself, most of his weight resting on his ankles, not letting his knees touch the floor. He waits, squeezes both hands into smoking fists. 

 

Then, a whisper. “Mercy.”

 

She doesn’t acknowledge him, and he thinks this is a mistake, thinks maybe he should stand and turn and leave, uncork a bottle of something strong to drown out the dreams, muffle echoes they left behind. But the thought makes him nauseous. He swallows hard and exhales, gathering his resolve.

 

“Ziegler.”

 

Nothing. She lies still like a corpse in the making, and he bows his head against his chest, ignores the part of him that wants to run from here, rake his nails across his skin in order to feel something else. He stalls, eyes wondering back to that black mirror to find his face staring back at him, pale and strained. 

 

This was foolish. Unethical. But he just wanted to… to…

 

“Angela.”

 

A soundless gasp, a shutter, a stir into wakefulness. Her hands open and grab at the smooth concrete, knees tucked close to her chest, shoulders coming up and chin going down as she struggled to become smaller. She stares straight into where the two walls met as if she were looking into some great abyss, and he freezes, feels the stiffness travel up his spine. One of his hands uncurls, hangs sightly above his knee, bare and shaking.

 

_(This isn’t right. This isn’t right. This isn’t—)_

 

His chest aches in protest, and he bites back something hard and animalistic, spite boiling in the pit of his stomach, rage, indignation. He wasn’t here for that. Not like last time. 

 

In a flash, her eyes move. She sees him bowed over her, maskless and out of uniform, and before he could so much open his mouth she is gone in a flurry of motion and gasps, dragging herself further into the corner where she cowers from him, panicked. She moves wrong— standing doesn’t seem to be an option, so her body squeezes itself between the walls, limbs tight together, spine unable to straighten. He watches her tremble; watches the version of her he had dreamed of vanish into vapor all over again. That sense of strength— of _hope_ — is not here. Now now.

 

It scares him— _shocks_ him. It shouldn’t, he knows, but it does. Because he’s _him_ , not them, and it’s different.

 

(He’s different.)

 

“I’m…” 

 

He wants to say something like _I’m not going to hurt you,_ but he can’t find his voice, can’t muster the pride. She makes a noise like a whimper, palms raised in defense, eyes glazed over. They are so much grayer than he remembers— so much older. 

 

The hand over his knee raises slowly, and he tries to reach for her; tries to find some indication that this was Angela, the one who had sat here in silence as he yelled and screamed and cussed up a storm, told her he wished that she was dead, that _he_ was dead, that the world would be better off. The one who looked him in the eye afterwards and quietly took the blame for both of them, even though she didn’t deserve it. The one who gave him her forgiveness— who didn’t ask for his. 

 

But she flinches, eyes wild, and he abandons that idea of her, hates himself for ever believing he would find it here again. She lifts her arms and shields her face, and he can see the bruises there on the undersides, crusted blood, little cuts that look like tallies. Her legs are no better. The bottom of her feet are blistered to hell. The ankle that was purple when she first got here is now yellow and swollen, and there are burns trailing up her thighs, most likely where they shocked her senseless, disrupted the nanites to keep her from healing. Her clothes are torn, slivers of her stomach and sides exposed, the work of a blade evident all over.

 

None of this is new, but he’s suddenly seeing it for the first time— seeing _her._ Seeing those dulled eyes stare at him like he was a stranger.

 

She was terrified of him.

 

(Of _him.)_

 

He stands and backs away from her, the base of his neck tingling, his lungs caving in. The motion sends her further away, and she buries her face into the crook of her arm, says something he can hardly make out.

 

“S-Stop, wait, _bitte_ , _nicht mehr._ I can’t. I— _bitte—”_

 

Her voice is raw, pitched like an instrument tuned too tightly. It makes parts of him collapse into smoke— the center of his chest, the entire left side of his face, all gone in an exhale of nicotine, crawling back together at an agonizing rate. 

 

“I— I was...”

 

What did he think would happen? That she would embrace him? Why did he come here daring to believe she would see him and _not_ hate him, not shrink away, not fear that he was here to beat her, burn her, hurt her until she talked? He hasn’t stepped foot in this room since that day they acknowledged each other in the mirror; hasn’t let her see him since. 

 

She must think he doesn’t care. She must think he strolled in here on a whim with the worst intentions. She must think he’s a monster.

 

(Isn’t that what he _wanted?)_

 

He takes one step forward and then two back, uncertain , ashamed. Her eyes never leave him, but they are foggy and framed with fear, and there are moments he isn’t sure if she’s looking at him or straight through. She winces under her breath, withdraws at nothing.

 

His mouth opens, closes, clenches together. He hesitates.

 

Then he flees.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am trying, i promise.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [reuploaded due to technical dificulties]  
> and we're back! sorry for the wait. senior year is a son of a bitch.  
> this chapter has been a long time coming. a very heartfelt thank you to Hellsung for his work beta-ing and encouraging me through, line by line. also, a thank you to everyone so far who has commented, especially Htokki, Vinnie, and saff; i really appreciate your patience and kind words.  
> -  
> the tags to this fic have been updated.

The shotguns are in pieces on the floor. He scrubs at one of the barrels with a cleaning rod soaked in oil, doesn’t notice when the stuff stains his hands, the fabric of his pants, the carpet of his quarters. He works quickly and efficiently and without a sound, disconnecting the front sight from the muzzle and running it through with a brush, setting it aside for later reassembly. Then comes the lower barrel, the loading spring, the mag cap and action pump. All lined up and spotless, although they were fine to begin with. 

 

There is an order, here. A correctness, undeniable and apparent. He tries to bury his head in it, but he can’t distract himself for long. 

 

The clock on his nightstand reads _04:29_. He tries not to look but somehow keeps coming back to it, back to her, back to the seconds and minutes and hours passing since he left her slumped in that corner, her limbs pulled so tightly to her body that they shook. 

 

Grunting, he reaches for the filer, pretends to look over the handle for any dents or ruptures, signs of damage. 

 

It was their fault. _They_ were supposed to come for her. Morrison and Amari and the rest of them— they were supposed to come weeks ago and rescue her just like they rescued everyone, just like they always preached. This was the game, and that was their part, and he can’t help that they decided not to play. It wasn’t him. He was keeping his side of the balance, tending to the scales, loyal to the chaos, and it wasn’t _him—_

 

The phone on his bed lit up, vibrated. He didn’t move to look at it.

 

He takes the finished pieces into his hands, bare and pale and ugly, matted with scars, smoking. They come together in seconds, the barrel screwing in, the trigger black and gleaming. Every click and clatter of metal is familiar, every twist of the wrists, flick of the fingers, this practice of taking apart and putting together by now a second nature; delicate but simple. Linear. In moments the gun is whole, sitting heavy in his grasp, and he eyes the empty magazine, mutters under his breath the uselessness of it all.

 

He didn’t want to remember anymore. It wasn’t worth the fallout. It was easier to remain here, blank, damaged only where it didn’t count, out of the reach of dreams— _delusions_ — easier to stay in the space between a dead man and a ghost. Why would he want anything more? What was the merit in it? He wasn’t the same, wasn’t Gabriel, wasn’t a hero or a soldier or a man, wasn’t one of them, wasn’t like her. Those memories didn’t matter anymore— didn’t belong to him. They just muddied the water, made it harder to breathe. 

 

(He thinks of her, cold and alone, cowering in his shadow. Thinks of the marks on her back, her limbs, blotched bruises, clothing ruined and stained. Thinks of how she looked at him, swollen eyes unfocused, fumbling with the words, tripping between languages— thinks that she shouldn’t be the one there, that it should be Jack, should be Jesse, should be Ana or Oxton or Genji or _someone that had it coming_ , someone who gave into this game, this war, this killing-for-peace mantra _bullshit_ they all sang themselves— thinks that it should not be the small woman who only ever healed, only ever tried to help, only ever pulled the trigger when the sights were pointed at paper targets— should not be _her_ bleeding out and breaking down on a concrete floor— should not be _her_ paying their price— should not be _him_ here to decide—)

 

He puts the gun down, goes to assemble the one still scattered across the floor. He just needed to stop thinking— to stop remembering— to _stop_. Needed to wait for himself to recalibrate, calm down. To remind himself that she deserved this in her own way— that this was him proving to her that people can’t play God, can’t cheat death, can’t save everyone from everything and think the world wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t demand a cost. This was order. This was fair.

 

(What had they done to her? What did he let them do?)

 

He had suffered— _he_ had _suffered—_ because she couldn’t let it go— couldn’t take no for an answer— and now it was her turn, her time, her trial for thinking herself a savior. It’s right, it’s deserved, it’s _victory—_

 

Again, his phone. That fanfare of noise, a bright screen. He pauses his work, tilts his head towards his bed, hesitates.

 

She had been terrified of him. She had seen him and she didn’t reach for him, didn’t smile, didn’t soothe him down with a soft tone and careful words or touch him on the shoulder, because this was not a dream, and he was not the same. 

 

Blinking hard, he focused his eyes in front of him, the second shotgun now put together, empty barrel and all. He heard the lights hum above him, the AC rattling, a door a few halls over open and close, and he stood, gripping the stock, a cloud of smoke rising with his cloak. He touched his lips with his free hand, cold and stiff, and felt the air flow between them, thinking, paralyzed.

 

Silently, he reaches for the communicator, reads the screen. Sombra’s number is there— she had called, left a text. He opens it.

 

_‘Doctor’s room. Now.’_

 

At first, it means nothing. A frown twists on his lips, and he stares down at the phone, confused, annoyed. He has already been there, he wants to demand; has already seen what needed to be seen, is already regretting such futility. His fingers hover over the keyboard, but he hesitates, considers. 

 

Sombra wasn’t like this— she would not call for nothing but a guilt-trip, a cheap reaction. She was smarter than that, more angular, not nearly as cruel. Not with him. At least, he hoped. 

 

_‘Why?’_ he types back.

 

No reply. He rocks back on his heels, grimaces at nothing. The gun in his hand feels heavier, harder to hold onto.

 

She sends a single word; one that burns itself into his retinas like a bolt of lightning, one that makes his head hurt.

 

_’Intruder.’_

 

He stares, dumbfounded. He stares and he tries to think around the static, tries to piece together the meaning, tries to figure out why his lips had begun to curl at the corners in a way they had not done in weeks, months. He stares until the phone’s screen dims and the only light comes from above, and he takes notice of his shadow, that uncertain shape there below his feet, and he feels his limbs unhinge, his spine relax.

 

Finally. 

 

_Finally_ , Morrison got his shit together. Finally, he had come, he and the rest, and they had found their way in, all the way past the wall, the two checkpoints, the bloody _front door,_ those clever bastards; past the guards and the sensors and the spotlights and—

 

(Move).

 

—and they had come for her. Taken her from his hands, his conscience. They had freed her— _him_ — and now the balance would be restored, the scales satisfied.

 

_(Move)._

 

He was walking, but he was hardly aware of it. The floor flew beneath him. The gun was still in his hand. 

 

He would see them, he decided. He would see them and he would put on a show, would play his part, don the mask and the cloak and the gnarling teeth so that they might play proper saviors. They would do battle with wooden swords, with no conviction, not this time. _See?_ he would say, ridden with hysterics. _See how easy? See how simple?_

 

He forgot that his mask and uniform was behind him in his room. He forgot that he was now only in casuals, dark pants and a jacket. He forgot to keep his footsteps silent, forgot all manner of coyness, forgot to stop and think that Sombra had not sounded the alarm, that there were no flashing lights, hurried voices. He forgot, and he did so willingly. Readily. Surrendered to the bliss.

 

The hall seemed distorted, pulled tight and long before him. He felt the breath travel up and down his throat. It was late here— he saw no one on his way to the battle, and he did not consider this strange, only polite, proper. His gun was light. The magazine was empty. One corner after another he ate up the distance between them, and he was smiling, face solid, certain once more, comforted by the solidarity.

 

A final turn, and he saw the interrogation door cracked open, cold light creeping out. The fools forgot to close it. Jack must be getting sloppy. 

 

He takes a step forward, then stops, something holding him, gluing his boots to the tiles. The roof of his mouth itches. His fingers trace his chest under the fabric of his shirt, the skin tight underneath his touch, hard and painful. It’s a sensation nearly foreign to him. He looks down and drinks it in, that and the sound of quiet whispering from the half-opened room, muffled whimpers, bodies in motion, and it’s as if he’s not really there, not all the way awake. He is dazed. Sick. His head throbs like someone was using it to crack concrete. He is delighted— distressed— confused. Torrid on the inside. Tasting vanilla and liquor.

 

Something moves in the corner of his peripherals. A camera stares down at him, moving side to side slightly, grabbing his attention. He looks up, trying to focus the eyes in his skull, eyes he suddenly does not consider his own, and he practically sees Sombra there on the other side of the lens. The device blinks down at him expectantly. 

 

_Intruder_. From the room, there is a hiss of protests, a voice too hoarse to speak.

 

_(—move move move move move—)_

 

One step. Another. The feeling trickles back into his legs. He is no longer smiling— he is listening to sounds behind the cracked door, two people, one demanding, the other desperate, breaking. None of them are Jack. None of them are Jesse. Ana. Genji. Lena. None of them are what he came he for. 

 

_Intruder_. 

 

The smell of blood. 

 

He runs. He runs and he feels his feet against the floor, feels the ache blooming outwards from his chest, a reaction that comes before the understanding. He doesn’t understand. He doesn't— 

 

The door crashes open at his command, the momentum he carried nearly ripping it from its hinges, and he sees _him_ , and the room goes black and red and foggy at the edges, the ceiling hanging low, caving, collapsing like his lungs and ribs, like the mess he had left of a heart. His body, heavy for once, jerks to a stop, smoke seething between him and the doorframe.

 

She is pressed tight to the concrete, face contorted and twisted, blood trickling at the corner of her bruised lips. When she breathes out, it’s a gasp, undignified, shaking. Her eyes— once calm, warm, familiar— stare at the far wall, wet and reddened. He can see her skin under the lights, bared to the cool air, bursting purple and brown.

 

The recruit he met weeks ago presses down on her, hands atop the half-healed lashes on her back, grabbing, squeezing, pulling her closer with careless urgency. The many rings on his fingers throw scarlet spotlights up at the ceiling, clinking together. His belt is undone. It makes an ugly noise as he moves, causing her whimper, recoil weakly into herself, try to become so small she’d disappear. Above her, he is greedy. Mindless. Holding her tight enough to bruise.

 

And, again, things become simple.

 

Gabriel moves so fast parts of him get left behind, half-solid smoke, his single gun. He moves across the room and into her cell. He moves without feeling his body operate, bending down and grabbing the recruit by the throat, throwing him against the glass, what was now a dark mirror, one he didn’t mind anymore. The young man screams, surprised. He says something that Gabriel cannot hear. Behind him, the reflection cracks. 

 

His own voice is changed. The words feel right, whole, singeing rage and boiling water, hot enough to melt flesh.

 

“Bastard.”

 

Gabriel hits him. His knuckles crack and stitch back together. The boy with the rings bleeds under one eye and both nostrils. 

 

“The hell?!” he screams, and Gabriel hits him again, hard enough to break something in the both of them. The recruit cries. The glass splinters deeper. 

 

“You _bastard.”_

 

“I didn’t—”

 

His fist connects with his stomach this time, once, twice, and then again. He himself is trembling. Reeling. Reckless. Ozone on his tongue. Guilt and rage mixed in with his organs. He can’t see straight— he swings again, misses, feels his skin split open as the mirror shatters under his knuckles. His reflection disappears into a thousand lesser selves. The recruit is now hanging from his throat, trying to get a grip on the hand holding him up, trying to breathe. _Bastard._

 

“You did. You did everything. You broke _everything_.” Gabriel speaks without looking at him. He cannot get the image out of his eyes. Her beneath him. Skin and bones. Fuck. _Fuck._

 

Gabriel chokes on nothing, brings his second hand up behind the boy’s skull, braces him against the wall and snaps his neck. The body falls, limp like a half-empty sack. 

 

It’s too quick. Too clean. He wants to rip off every limb one by one, fingers first, legs last, but there is no time. He feels his pulse is in his fingers, in his throat, behind his eyes. He turns away from the corpse and finds Angela trying to get her hands to steady, clutching scraps of decency to her chest, breathing hard, trembling exhales. She does not look at him. The concrete had left marks on her cheek.

 

And everything is broken. Every part of him that once was steady, certain, calm, now reduced little sharp pieces that poked against his lungs. He drops, inches close to her, trying to conjure words that would make this remotely okay. She flinches from his shadow, but he persists, his options cut off, his side chosen. Not Talon. Not Overwatch. _Her._

 

(I didn’t mean for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t know. I didn’t _know)_.

 

“I’m sorry,” he surrendered, in this place where she once did the same. His voice is high, out of tune. He plays regret like an old master. “I’m sorry. Angela, I’m—”

 

They are not coming. Maybe they were trying, maybe they were searching, but Jack had failed. It was too late to wait. It was too late for any of them. 

 

The words come without permission and he does not try to stop them; does not resist as something strong and ancient and primal takes over, new hands gripping the wheel, human and not so bloody. “I’m going to fix this. Let me fix this.” 

 

He removes the jacket from his shoulders, and she shrinks, too cautious to be hopeful. The material practically swallows her. She inhales sharply as the fabric brushes over the dented metal ports on her back, still not looking him in the eye, shaking worse than he is. Gently, with a softness he will have to remaster, he reaches for her, helps her away from the filthy floor. Her protest is half-hearted. He zips up the overcoat.

 

“… Gabe?” She says the name after more than one attempt. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused. Maybe they had drugged her. Maybe she had stopped trying to hold on.

 

He shakes his head in every direction. “Nearly. Can you walk?”

 

She reaches, fumbles, touches him on the hand. Her fingertips are chilled, dirt hiding under her nails. “Gabe,” she says again, and he hesitates, hands hovering over her, unsure if he was allowed to hold her, touch her; unsure if he had lost that right.

 

“Yeah,” he answers, not caring if he believed it or not. He would be whatever he needed to be for her. Until she was out of here. Home.

 

(Home. Coffee with Amari. Genji and Jesse sparing in the fields. Spring in Gibraltar. Cards games by candlelight, Lucio’s music in the background. People smiling. The ocean not far off, Jack casting lines in by the shore. Patching each other up. Betting on how many times Fareeha can make Ana go crosseyed. Saving each other. Saving everything they could. Holding onto one another when the things they couldn’t slipped through their fingers. Home. Jack driving, Angela passed out behind them. Moonlight on the water. The taste of cheap beer. Arguments paved over by missions-gone-right. Making up. Sticking close. Home. Her eyes when she laughed— that rolling sound he wanted to bottle up and get drunk on. Home).

 

She leaned against him, dug her face into his shirt. He felt her breathe, tremble, bring her knees up and closer. His face prickled with heat, his vision going strange and watery. Slowly, he lowered an arm, held her as she shook, feeling her ribs against him through the layers. Her hair was dirty blond after weeks without a wash. One of her brows was split in two. He felt unsteady hands try to grab him through the fabric, hands that did not belong to a surgeon, hands in need of something solid to hold onto besides themselves and this room. 

 

“I have you,” he said, the voice burning up his throat. “I’m— I won’t let them near you. I won’t let them close.” He fumbles, a moment of free fall, smoke wrapping slowly around the both of them, abstract hands. Something alive pounds inside his chest. Movement inside his arteries.

 

“We’re getting out.”

 

She listened, eyes half-closed, lips nearly too chapped to talk. Nodding, she worked on getting her arms through the jacket sleeves, every motion either sluggish or jerking. One of her shoulders seemed unable to move. Gently, he helped her along.

 

“Okay,” she said, voice thick with exhaustion, the syllables fitting ungracefully together. She shifted, hands and feet rearranging. “Okay.”

 

He stood with her, one hand at her back, the other trapped in a death grip. She squeezed him as she tried to find balance, strength, tendons and muscles working violently to remember how this dance went. Her legs strained. He looked down with her and found her feet were bare against the concrete. They took a step together and she winced, resisted a moment more, and then allowed her knees to give out, the rest of her crumpling like a puppet tanged in its strings. Gabriel kept her steady as she rode out the tremors.

 

“M’sorry,” she wheezed, a hand going to press against her middle, bowing her head so the hair fell into her face.

 

He shook his head, looked up at the camera in the corner, the device blinking steadily. Sombra was on their side, but time was not. Dawn was mere hours away. Someone else with access to the feed was bound to switch over sooner than later— he couldn’t hide the body and get her out before the sun came up and the base came awake.

 

“Here,” he started, hooking one arm under her knees using the other to cradle her spine. She weighed nothing. Her body went limp as he took over. “I got you. Just— hold on.”

 

And without a second thought, he stepped over what remained of the glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... and five chapters later, what was once considered a two-shot begins its final act.
> 
> i tried my hardest with this one, because i believed it a chapter that deserved diligence and effort. thank you for reading-- if you enjoyed, please consider leaving me a comment, as they are what writers like me thrive on!
> 
> again, my sincere thanks to Hellsung, and to those of you who have stuck with me through these updates.
> 
> more to come. stay tuned.


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